OK, so you don't want the Net Neighborhood cluttering your desktop because you only
have an Internet connection, or your Win95 takes up too much hard drive space, or
whatever. Maybe your system runs too slow and you want to speed it up. Maybe you heard
about some cool utility that'll speed up your computer. Read about it here.

More important, read the Win95
Annoyances FAQ for more details, if you think I'm missing something. This is where
most of this info came from. BE WARNED: I do not recommend Registry hacking via REGEDIT to
clean up your system! All my tips here demonstrate methods without using REGEDIT; rather
they use Policy Editor. POLEDIT works with stand alone
computers to directly edit the Registry, as well as creating policy files.

If you don't have MS Exchange installed, you can remove this
icon by just right-clicking it and selecting "Delete". If you don't use it and
you want to get rid of it, run Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, and de-select all the MS
Exchange and MS Fax components. The next time you re-start the Inbox icon will not be
there.

If you want to keep Exchange but still remove the Inbox, you'll have to resort to this Registry Hack.

If all you use is Internet access and don't use any other Win95 networking, you can run
Network Control Panel, and remove all network components but the Dial-up Adapter and
TCP/IP. This will remove the Net Neighborhood and all other Win95 clients from your
system. NOTE: This will also disable password caching!

If you use Win95 clients as well, you can hide it with Policy Editor in Default User/Shell/Hide Network Neighborhood. You
can also hide individual components of Net Hood. NetWare NDS networks have additional Net
Hood restrictions you can enforce as well.

You can't hide the icon itself, because it still points to Control Panel, Printers, and
Dial-up networking. You can hide the drives themselves, however, from Policy Editor;
Default User/Shell/Hide drives in My Computer.

Apparently according to Annoyances,
you can also make up a "blank" icon (using any freeware icon editor) and use MS
Plus to change the icon to it. Also, rename the "My Computer" to a single space.
The icon's still there, but no one will see it. You might also want to drag this invisible
icon to an inconspicuous place on your desktop.

I would just say Don't Use MSN, but you can right-click on the icon and delete it; it's
just it will re-appear whenever you log in to MSN. If you choose not to use MSN (Good for
you!) you can remove it from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. The MSN icon won't go away
until the next reboot, but it will go away.

The Start Menu (And desktop as well) are just directories
with shortcuts inside. You can right-click on the Start Menu and hit Open, then find
the startup folder and delete the shortcuts in it. You can also right-click on the
Taskbar, get Properties, and in Start Menu Items tab, hit "Remove".

Some Win 3.1 thinking programmers (like at ATI) put their programs in WIN.INI's load=
line in the [boot] section. Don't they trust themselves with the Registry yet? You can run
SYSEDIT.EXE and delete the offending load= line from WIN.INI.

Programs that insert themselves in the Registry, using the CurrentVersion\Run key, run
before WIN.INI gets touched. You can remove these using Policy Editor; Default
Computer/System/Run.

Interesting note: "Run Services" shows programs that run even before you get
a log in prompt. Some anti-virus software may insert themselves here (Some viruses could
insert themselves here too!)

I haven't figured Norton Anti-Virus out yet! That's so weird; they aren't in the load=,
or in the Registry, or even in AUTOEXEC.BAT; yet the anti-virus monitor can still load! I
think they hack into one of the Win95 core system files somehow.

The best bet is to uninstall the offending program with its uninstaller. All
"Designed for Win95" programs have an uninstaller.

Yes I know. Win95's supposed to update the network copy of the shortcuts on log-out,
but sometimes they just keep coming back. Delete them from your Home directory or MAIL
directory as well to keep them from coming back.

Normally you can right-click on the Taskbar, hit "Start Menu Programs", and
hit "Clear Documents Menu" to clear it. But it will just fill up as you work
with Win95.

MS has a Power
Toy that clears this folder on exit. Try that before you try any of the hacks below.

There's a Registry Hack that
relocates the Documents menu (the RECENT folder) to the Recycle Bin, and if you have
"Remove immediately" turned on it will keep that menu clean, but there IS a
safer way.

In AUTOEXEC.BAT include this line:

DEL %WINDIR%\RECENT\*.*

An even more effective way to keep the documents menu clean, and still enjoy its
functionality during a single Win95 session, is to insert a command into System Agent, if you have MS Plus! installed. Write a batch file
with the above command in it, then add it into System Agent. Schedule it to run "On
Startup". This method won't work if you use User
Profiles, but there's a work-around for that if you used WINSET
to copy the %USERNAME% variable. Use this style of batch file instead:

DEL %WINDIR%\PROFILES\%USERNAME%\RECENT\*.*

NOTE: DOS programs run from System Agent should have "Background: Always
Suspend" turned OFF! Also, instead of inserting the program itself into System Agent,
insert its PIF file instead.

Additional NOTE: You can run PIF files from the Registry, from load= in WIN.INI, or in
the startup group as well, in case you don't have System Agent.

All programs Designed
for Win95 have an uninstaller you can access from Add/Remove
Programs/Install/Uninstall. If not, complain to the publisher of the program. If that
doesn't work, complain to Microsoft, who awarded the logo to them.

A program's uninstaller will remove its components and Registry entries, if properly
written.

Printers are rather conveniently removed; if Explorer realizes you removed a printer
and no other printer uses its drivers, it will offer to delete the offending files.

Other hardware drivers will remain, however. So, if you want to remove files used by a
given piece of hardware, run Device Manager and bring up
that device's properties. Bring up the "Driver" tab, copy this list where the
driver files are, and delete them after you remove that device. You have to look BEFORE
you remove the device, and not AFTER, or the list disappears with the device entry.

If you use MS-Plus you need to remove Internet Explorer from Plus' uninstaller.
IEXPLORE 2.0 will have its own uninstaller, but the uninstaller will keep the Internet Setup Wizard and its control panel entry in tact. You can
always re-run the setup wizard even if you installed a different browser to replace
IEXPLORE. It also keeps the Internet Mail client for MS-Exchange installed, which won't
disappear unless you remove Exchange.

NOTE: According to Win95 Annoyances, IEXPLORE will keep many pieces of itself in the
system after you uninstall it this way. IEXPLORE 2.0 does a better job of uninstalling
itself, but it still keeps the Setup Wizard, mail client for Exchange, and auto-dialer in
tact. You should keep these really, but you can delete the "Program
Files/Plus!/Microsoft Internet" folder afterwards.

To keep the file type registrations in tact, you should re-install your browser of
choice after you uninstall Internet Explorer. IEXPLORE's uninstaller will destroy any
changes you made to .HTM and .HTML file type entries.

Remove the BillNet icon from the Desktop, then remove BillNet from Add/Remove
Programs/Windows Setup,. This will remove the main MSN control program and the Exchange
mail client, but it will install a "Set up the Microsoft Network" installer in
its place. You can simply delete the Program Files/The Microsoft Network folder completely
afterwards, even though it says "This will impact one or more registered
programs." Big deal.

Win95 Annoyances says the BillNet icon's Delete option goes away after you remove it
from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. I found, however, that the icon will go away by
itself after you re-start.

Get a decent Designed
for Win95 uninstaller if you want the flexibility of removing Win 3.1 apps cleanly.

The only uninstaller which actually works (that I saw, anyway) is CleanSweep 95 from
Symantec, but it only works if you install the Win 3.1 program AFTER you install
CleanSweep.

To use CleanSweep, just try running any program called "SETUP" or
"INSTALL" or any number of variants. The CleanSweep monitor kicks in and asks
you if you want to monitor the installation. On occasion, a Setup program might not like
this (and crash the install monitor), in which case you can manually start logging (by
clicking on the Install Monitor in the Taskbar) before running the setup program, and
manually stop it.

Also available now is Remove-IT 95 by Vertisoft. This program does a great job of
completely nuking The Microsoft Network, including all Registry entries.

My Boss, Jim Farewell, firmly believes you should use a "Professional
Uninstaller" to monitor all app installations, including Designed for Win95
ones. OK, have it your way. Just be prepared.

Win95 Setup will maintain your old DOS and Windows, if you chose to install on top of
your existing Windows setup. Later on, you can remove the old DOS and Windows files from
Add/Remove Programs/Install/uninstall.

If you installed Win95 in a different directory, you can also simply delete the old DOS
and Windows folders in Explorer. Win95 Setup would've included your old DOS directory in
your path, however, so maybe leave that one alone until you decide you don't need the old
DOS utilities anymore.

You can also uninstall Win95 from Add/Remove Programs/Install/uninstall, if you
installed on top of your existing Windows. If you installed in a different directory,
however...

Re-boot the computer with your old DOS disk

From the DOS prompt, type SYS C: (This restores the original DOS system files)

Rename CONFIG.DOS to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.DOS to AUTOEXEC.BAT

Re-boot off the hard drive

Then you can remove your Win95 directory, PROGRA~1 directory, and any hidden or system
files you don't recognize. The easiest way to do this is run Win 3.1 File Manager, and
have "Show Hidden/System Files" turned on in View/File Types".

File System/CD-ROM caching: reduce to around 250 KB, no less, and pick the
"right" type of read-ahead access for your speed of CD-ROM (Making a
double-speed drive use a quad-speed read-ahead doesn't always work!)

Virtual memory: Let Windows manage VM; it keeps the swap file as %WINDIR%\WIN386.SWP
which you can erase in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Remove any swap file-related entries in SYSTEM.INI
also.

You will find these settings give the quietest hard drives, even with disk compression
used!

NOTE: Norton Navigator will cause additional disk swapping, because it maintains
more shortcuts in the Start Menu which will verify that their targets exist.

If you let Win95 manage virtual memory, it will try to grow/shrink the swap file as
required. On systems with low disk space this is actually a GOOD thing, because it doesn't
instantly eat hard drive space. On systems with large hard drives this will become an
annoyance, and the swap file will fragment, slowing down swapping.

Others (many others) suggest letting the swap file grow is a GOOD thing on big systems,
because large programs can "Bottom-out" on fixed swap files. If you choose to
let Win95 manage virtual memory, include this line somewhere in AUTOEXEC.BAT:

DEL C:\WIN95\WIN386.SWP

So when your computer re-starts Win95 will re-build the swap file unfragmented. While
you're at it, you can kill the contents of the TEMP directory the same way (DELTREE /Y
C:\WIN95\TEMP\*.*).

Those programs were for Win 3.1 apps that ate ridiculous amounts of GDI memory (System
Resources), where they fixed inadequacies in the operating system. Win95 has larger
resource limits, and properly written Win32 programs won't use them... as much.

Please save your money and effort, and stay away from this bogus software. If you
really need to run 500 programs at once, get Windows NT Workstation.

This is evident of shortcuts and PIF files pointing to files on floppy disks.

When Win95 builds its Start Menu, it checks all the shortcuts to see that they point to
something intelligent. This will lead to floppy access when you view the Documents menu,
for example.

Whenever you run a DOS program, Win95 builds a PIF file for it. If the program ran from
a removable disk (like a floppy or CD-ROM) it will store the PIF in %WINDIR%\PIF.

To stop the constant floppy access from these shortcuts, right-click on the hard drive
with Win95 in it and hit "Find...", then in the search space, type
"*.lnk;*.pif", then hit the Advanced tab and in the "Containing Text"
box, type "A:". Hit Find.

That search should generate a list of shortcuts pointing to drive A, including those in
your RECENT, and PIF folders. Delete them from this window. Don't delete any shortcuts in
the "SendTo" folder, but you should be able to safely delete the rest. The
random floppy access will stop once you do.

To avoid getting this random disk access again, avoid launching documents and programs
off floppy disks. Instead, open documents from the program they came from, and run DOS
programs by opening a DOS prompt first, then switching to A: and running it from there.

Win95's CDFS auto-detects disks when inserted, so Explorer can properly update the
drive and folder windows. It also looks for an AutoPlayer on the disk (autoplay.inf) and
will launch it. Because of this continuous checking, the CD-ROM drive light will flash. If
it's an IDE drive, your HD light will flash along with it.

You could use real mode CD-ROM drivers and MSCDEX instead, but this leads to very
pathetic performance. I would say ignore it and don't worry, because this auto-detect
takes about 0% processor time. But if you insist on being annoyed by it:

Bring up My Computer/Properties and select Device Manager. Bring up properties for the
CD-ROM drive, and turn off "Auto-Insert Notification". This is also advisable
for CD-ROM changer owners, otherwise it will scan all of your platters when you insert the
cartridge. Maybe turn it on for the first platter and leave it off for the rest; CD-ROM
changers show up as multiple drives, because each platter has its own SCSI LUN ID.

User Profiles go a long way in keeping your computer clean, if you have several users
using it.

Go to Passwords Control Panel (which is always there even for non-networked machines)
and in the User Profiles tab, select "Each user has their own settings". Also
turn on the Custom Desktop and Custom Start Menu.

Read all about it in Page 7 here. You can keep custom
settings for every Win32 app, not just for the desktop and start menu. It's also good if
you destroy your Registry by accident; at least half of it is saved.

.GID files are help index files. They include word lists for the matching help file.

Yes they're safe to remove, but when you access the help file next time, WINHLP32 will
re-build the .GID file. Also, some Win32 programs require the .GID file be present. To
re-build a deleted .GID file, open the help file from Explorer.

These are directory index files that MS Office "Fast Find" makes when you
first access a directory. You can remove these, but FastFind will re-create them when you
access the folder again. To keep them from coming back, remove the Fast Find shortcuts in
your Startup group.

If you don't use disk compression you can remove this. Otherwise don't. Win95 uses the
programs here to undo interrupted compression tasks. The programs in here are actually Win
3.1 programs, that run in the special DOSX environment, to do compressed drive conversions
and such.